Omniscience
Omniscience of God is the intellectual attribute of being all-knowing and is one of God’s personal attributes. The word “omniscience” comes from the Latin words omni (which means “all”) plus scientia (which means “knowledge”). The word “science” is taken from that Latin word, but the word means knowledge, not simply science. Omni-scientia – God has all knowledge. That is what it is to be omniscient. Scriptural Data The scriptural data on God’s omniscience is astonishing in the greatness of God’s intellectual powers. God knows all things, everything that happens. God knows the secret thoughts of every individual. God even knows the future. God has immeasurable, perfect knowledge such that he cannot learn anything because he is perfect in knowledge. These are some of the scriptural data about the attribute of omniscience. Psalm 139:1-6 is a good exposition of the omniscience of God. The psalmist writes: O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Here the psalmist gives a good description or poetic account of God’s omniscience. Some of the things that God knows in virtue of being omniscient can be specifically looked at. God Knows Everything That Happens God knows everything that is going on. Job 28:24 says, “he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens.” Here it portrays God as surveying the Earth and he sees everything that is going on. He is aware of everything. Turning over to Job 31:4 the author asks, “Does he not see my ways, and number all my steps?” Of course the answer is yes, God knows every step that he takes and sees all of his ways. God knows everything that is going on. A couple chapters after at Job 34:21-22: “For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, and he sees all his steps. There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves.” Here there is nothing that is undisclosed to God. He sees everything that is happening. This same truth can be found in Proverbs 15:3: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” This is an expression as it were of the omnipresence of God as well. Finally, this same truth is taught in the New Testament in Matthew 10:29-30. Here Jesus is speaking and asks, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” Jesus is emphasizing here that God knows the tiniest details about a person – even the number of hairs on a person’s head are known to God. So God knows all things that happen in the world. God Knows The Secret Thoughts Of Every Individual He not only sees what is happening everywhere in the world, but he knows the secret thoughts of every person. That is to say, God reads a person’s mind. 1 Chronicles 28:9. This is David’s instruction to Solomon. And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every plan and thought. So God searches the hearts and he understands every person’s thoughts. Similarly, Psalm 44:21 has a phrase there saying that God knows “the secrets of the heart.” Then in Jeremiah 17:9-10: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? here comes the answer from God. “I the Lord search the mind and try the heart, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” So God searches and knows people’s hearts. Again, this same truth is reaffirmed in the New Testament. For example, in Hebrews 4:13 it says, “And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” So there are no secrets from God. He even reads people’s mind. He knows the depths of their heart and their inner motives. As the author of Hebrews said, it is as though the person is naked and laid bare to the eyes of God even in their innermost thoughts. God Knows The Future This is affirmed in Psalm 139, verse 4 in particular: “Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.” So even before someone speaks the words that they speak, God already knows them before the person utters them. Also in Psalm 139:14b-16: Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Here the psalmist affirms that even as a human was being formed in the womb and had not yet been born, all of the days of the person’s life were already written in God’s book. All of the days that someone live – from the day of birth to the day of death – God knows them. They are in his book so to speak. So God knows the future. The knowledge of the future was thought by Jewish prophets to be one of the distinguishing marks of the true God of Israel from the false gods of Israel’s neighbors. In contrast to the God of Israel, the true God, the pagan gods could not tell the future. They did not know the future. This exposed them as false deities. Isaiah 41:21-24 is the challenge that Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel, issues to these pagan pretenders. Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; do good, or do harm, that we may be dismayed and terrified. Behold, you are nothing, and your work is nought; an abomination is he who chooses you. Here God makes his deity to stand or fall on his foreknowledge of the future. The God of Israel knows the future, and therefore is the true God. The gods of Israel’s neighbors cannot foretell the future and therefore are false gods. So God makes his deity stand or fall upon his ability to foretell the future. At Isaiah 46:9b-10, God says in verse 9: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’” The God of Israel, the God of the Old Testament, is a God who completely knows the future, even the very words that someone is going to speak before they speak them. That is why the God of the Bible is a God of prophecy. Over and over again prophecies of highly contingent events that could not have been predicted by the causal factors that were present at the time the predictions were given are found. This, of course, then carries on into the New Testament where there is Jesus, the Son of God, exercising his role as a prophet in predicting not only his Second Coming and the signs of the end times but also highly contingent events like Peter’s denying him three times before the cock crows twice, or Judas’ betrayal of him. The Bible is clear in affirming God’s foreknowledge of the future. God Cannot Learn Anything In Romans 11:33-36, Paul gives a doxology to God in which he refers to the excellence of God’s knowledge. Paul exclaims, O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen. Here Paul extols the unsearchable depths of God’s understanding and knowledge. Similarly, in the Old Testament in the book of Job, God’s understanding is extolled. Job 21:22 asks, “Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those that are on high?” The obvious implied answer is no. No one can teach God knowledge because God already has knowledge that is perfect. In Job 37:16 it refers to God as the one who is perfect in knowledge and therefore cannot be instructed or learn anything. Psalm 147:5 says, “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.” God’s understanding is infinite. It cannot be compassed. It is beyond measure. God Knows What Would Happen Under Different Circumstances God not only knows everything that is happening, everything that has happened and will happen, but he also knows even what would happen under different circumstances. Category:Doctrine of God Category:Personal Attributes